Drudge Hollywood: David Lynch's Mindtrip

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Drudge Hollywood: David Lynch's Mindtrip

Columnist Matt Drudge on David Lynch's nightmare film and Newt's weight gain and Stanley Kubrick's cold and Terrrence Malick's return.

Lynch Film Set to Shake Up Sundance

Ready for some hell? Director David Lynch is ready to give you some. Get down on your knees for what's being called the darkest and most provocative film to ever come out of Hollywood: Lost Highway.

"A pure nightmare. I wanted to go find the nearest church to get my soul back after I saw it. And I haven't been to church since I was 13!" revealed a Hollywood insider to the Drudge Report after Tuesday night's industry screening of the new October Films release. However, when asked if he would dare take in another dose of Lost Highway during the upcoming Sundance Film Festival, where the film will have its world première, he didn't miss a beat: "Yes, I will! ... The irony is that it's an extremely well-made film that sucks the viewer right into this undefinable hell."

Lost Highway is easily the most intense film ever to be declared hip, a dizzying twist of nonstop nightmare scenes designed to upset and unbuckle the viewer's faith in sanity. Others have tried to take us there - 12 Monkeys by Gilliam, Jacob's Ladder by Lyne - but nobody's gone this deep. Lynch puts the viewer into a 123-minute subterranean dream, void of logic and real storyline. It's just upsetting scene after upsetting scene.

Bill Pullman plays a jazz musician, obsessed with his wife's (Patricia Arquette) fidelity. Arquette actually plays two roles - one as a blonde, one as a brunette - and provocative marks are being given to her extended nude time on the screen.

The film apparently has no one specific moment that is at the root of all of this pre-release fuss. (There is a brief shot of a human mutilation; there's also sprinkled vilo-porn moments - all slight.) Rather, there's a feeling that a greater dynamic is at play: director Lynch using intense psychological warfare on the viewer.

No moral boundary whatsoever is found in the landscape Lynch paints. Scene after scene it pounds it into you: evil, chaos, and death are sexy. "It's the biggest mind game ever presented to the American moviegoer," laughed a second source (who's seen only a rough cut of the film). "People will be arguing over its meaning for a generation."

But what will the snow bunnies think about Lynch's urban nightmare up at the Sundance Festival? Will the lodges become obsessed with the film, as many are now predicting? And is this the kind of product that Robert Redford - who founded the festival in 1981 to showcase films that aren't made with studio money - wants?

"I'd gone to the theater one night during the '95 festival to see a few films - including Shallow Grave and The Basketball Diaries - and I could barely eat for 24 hours because they were so loaded with violence," Redford revealed in January's Interview. He told the magazine he hopes this month's festival isn't going to feature films that use violence and sex to sell tickets.

After seeing Lost Highway, Redford may never be able to eat again.

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Hill Staffers Concerned Over Gingrich Weight

As if there isn't already enough for Newt Gingrich to battle, the Drudge Report has received several dispatches from Capitol Hill revealing concern for the reelected Speaker's physical health. "He's put on at least 50 pounds since the recess," worried someone who sent a Newt-friendly email marked confidential and urgent. "His cholesterol count must be off the chart ... too much of that Georgia home-cooking." Then there's the email originating from a Democratic congressional office: "He's obviously been stress-stuffing."

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Eyes Shutting

Stanley Kubrick has reportedly been fighting a cold on the set of his super-secret Eyes Wide Shut, but that hasn't stopped him from running the cameras. And running them, and running them. After all, it's the first time he's been in production in more than a decade. "Eighteen-hour sessions have not been uncommon on his set," a friend at Warner Bros. slipped and told me during a recent visit to Burbank.

"What about ..." I started to ask.

"I can't tell you anything else, Drudge. You know that."

"Not even if -"

"Go home!"

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Malick Who?

Terrence Malick, the long-lost director who hasn't made a film since 1978's *Days of Heaven - before that it was 1975's Badlands - is about to start anew. Malick is set to film The Thin Red Line, which will roll in and around Australia starting in June. Every face in Hollywood is trying to get seen in this picture. The front-runners are thought to be Sean Penn, Gary Oldman, and Leonardo Di Caprio. Johnny Depp (looking Viper-roomed on the cover of February's Vanity Fair) is also reportedly aboard to star in Malick's long-awaited adaptation of James Jones' novel, which follows some of the same characters he wrote about in From Here to Eternity. Malick's cinematic return has been spoken of in hushed tones in the past couple of years. But no one here has taken it entirely seriously, because Malick is known as a famous procrastinator who also suffers from artistic block. (Nineteen years? Mild impasse.)

Malick, a Texan (Austin), has been visiting LA for the past couple of years and staying at least part of the time at Mike Medavoy's, his ex-agent and current head of Phoenix Pictures (Larry Flint, Mirror/Faces). It is believed that Medavoy's Phoenix is producing the film.

The making of Line continues the WWII vogue that has gripped Hollywood. There's Spielberg's upcoming Saving Private Ryan with Tom Hanks (to film after his slave-ship revolt movie), the still-in-development Combat, with "Bruce" playing Vic Morrow and the now-apparently-defunct With Wings as Eagles, in which "Arnold" would have played a good Nazi.

No, Hollywood isn't running out of ideas. It just looks and feels that way.

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Drudge Plug

The Drudge Report Web site has recently added a live UPI wire link, plus clicks to syndicated columnists: Huffington, Sobran, Pinkerton, Reeves, and a dozen more. There's also a new link to Daily Variety elites Army Archerd and Michael Fleming. Visit the site for what the BBC last week called, a place where "thousands of pounds of information can be found for free."*